Lecturer

2019-Present

London, UK

Lecturer in the Dyson School of Design Engineering teaching and conducting research.

My research explores for textile sensor and audio signal processing looking towards wearable applicaitons.

Lecturer

2016-2019

London, UK

Lecturer in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science teaching Interactive Digital Multimedia Techniques to MSc and PhD students and Real-Time Signal Processing to final year undergraduate, MSc, and PhD students.

My research involves building wearable computing systems that incorporate real-time signal processing of wearable sensors. The wearable systems are often implemented using e-textiles.

2012-2016

London, UK

Co-founder of studio doing software and hardware engineering for creative, interactive projects. We often colloborate with artists, designers, and musicians along with providing bespoke engineering for commercial clients. AAL has a core team of three engineers that work regularly with freelancers in fields such as product design and industrial engineering.

Anti-Alias Labs website and Twitter feed.

2011-2016

London, UK

Co-founder of social enterprise providing educational workshops in programming and electronics for creative technology projects. We partner with art galleries and other cultural institutions to teach technology in an unexpected setting, showing that technology and engineering can be a creative pursuit. Current and past partners include SPACE, Whitechapel Gallery, Furtherfield Gallery, Tate Modern, and Derby Silk Mill Museum.

Client work was also taken on through Codasign before founding Anti-Alias Labs.

Codasign website and Twitter feed.

2010-2011

London, UK

My first post a research assistant began when I submitted my thesis. I continued work I had started during my PhD research into creating a spatial audio interface for exploring a collection of music. It was funded by EPSRC grant 3D Audio Interface for Exploration of Audio Collections. The work resulted in filing a patent application which was pursued until 2013 when the university decided to no longer financially support the application.

The last work I did at QMUL was researching a new approach to a spatial audio interface. I spent 3 months at New York University working with Agnieszka Roginska and attending the ITP Camp. The research visit was funded by the C4DM Platform Grant.

2006-2010

Centre for Digital Music

School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science

Queen Mary, University of London

London, UK

Under the supervision of Prof Mark Sandler, the thesis focussed on interactive spatial audio environments to navigate large collections of data. One project was towards creating an interactive room model from a collection of room acoustics measurements. Other projects included investigating methods to present information about large music collections aurally without using a visual screen or monitor.

PDF of the thesis

2005-2006

Department of Music and Department of Electronics

University of York

York, UK

The Master of Science in music technology includes lectures on music composition and creative computer programming. The final thesis was written independently in the last three months of the degree and was supervised by Dr. Damian Murphy. The thesis expanded previous hybrid reverberation techniques that combine convolution and feedback delay networks by introducing more perceptually-motivated variables.

PDF of the thesis

2001-2005

Frost School of Music

University of Miami

Coral Gables, Florida, USA

The Bachelor of Music degree with double majors in music engineering and computer science involved classes on recording techniques and technology relating to multimedia such as digital signal processing. The program required private lessons and performance of a musical instrument, the trumpet.

Publications

All publications on Google Scholar

Books

R. Stewart, Adventures in Arduino, Wiley (2015).

Journal Articles

R. Stewart, "Cords and Chords: Exploring the Role of E-Textiles In Computational Audio" in Frontiers in ICT, Volume 2, 2019. [journal]

A. McArthur, R. Stewart and M. Sandler, "Sounds too true to be good: diegetic infidelity - the case for sound in virtual reality" in Journal of Media Practice, Volume 18 Issue 1, Routledge, May 2017. [journal]

R. Stewart and M. Sandler, "Spatial Auditory Display in Music Search and Browsing Applications" in Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Volume 60 Issue 11 pp. 936-946, November 2012. [aes e-library]

R. Stewart and M. Sandler, “Playlist generation and navigation in mobile listening,” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Special Issue on Mobile Media Search, Volume 28 Issue 4 pp. 14-23.[ieeexplore]

R. Stewart, P. Kudumakis, and M. Sandler, “Interactive music applications and standards,” CMMR Post-Symposium Proc. in the Springer Lecture Notes Computer Science Series, Springer, 2011.

Conference Proceedings

2019

C. Nordmoen, J. Armitage, F. Morreale, R. Stewart, A. McPherson. "Making Sense of Sensors: Discovery Through Craft Practice With an Open-Ended Sensor Material." In Proc. of ACM Int. Conf. on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS). San Diego, CA, USA, June 2019.

T. Heinzel, H. Munthe, T. Almeida, C. Andor, A. Badut, C. Baker, A. Biro, S. W. Chieh, R. Gaui, Maria P. Gutierrez Arango, S. Kock, E. Kurbak, A. Martinez Santos, I. Patrascu, V. Pennock, I. Popescu, Z. Popovici, A. Psarra, N. Roussel, A. Schmid, K. Sicchio, V. Shupliak, R. Stewart, M. John Tharakan, G. Tomasello, B. van Waardenberg, P. Vierne, DZNR Design Studio. "Attempts, Failures, Trails and Errors. Notes on an exhibition of failed prototypes and rejected projects." In Running with Scissors, 13th EAD Conference, University of Dundee, 10-12 April 2019, 2019

A. McArthur, M. Sandler, and R. Stewart. "Accuracy of Perceived Distance in VR Using Verbal Descriptors" In Proc. of AES Int. Conf. on Immersive and Interactive Audio. York, UK, March 2019.

R. Shukla, I.T. Radu, M. Sandler, R. Stewart. "Real-Time Binaural Rendering with Virtual Vector Base Amplitude Panning." In Proc. of AES Int. Conf. on Immersive and Interactive Audio. York, UK, March 2019.

2018

S. Skach, R. Stewart, P.G.T. Healey "Smart Arse: Posture Classification with Textile Sensors in Trousers." In Proc. of the ACM Int. Conf. on Multimodal Interaction. Boudler, CO, USA, Oct. 2018.

A. McArthur, M. Sandler, and R. Stewart. "Perception of mismatched auditory distance - cinematic VR." In Proc. of AES Int. Conf. on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality. Redmond, Washington, USA, August 2018.

R. Shukla, R. Stewart, A. Roginska, and M. Sandler. "User selection of optimal HRTF sets via holistic comparative evaluation." In Proc. of AES Int. Conf. on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality. Redmond, Washington, USA, August 2018.

R. Stewart, S. Skach, and A. Bin. "Making Grooves With Needles: Using e-textiles to encourage gender diversity in embedded audio systems design." In Proc. of ACM Int. Conf. on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS). Hong Kong, June 2018.

S. Skach, A. Xambò, A. Stolfi, L. Turchet, R. Stewart, and M. Barthet. "Embodied interaction with e-textiles and the internet of sounds for performing arts." In Proc. of ACM Conf. on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interactions (TEI), Stockholm, Sweden, March 2018. [acm digital library]

2017

R. Shukla and R. Stewart. "Metronome music time capsule: rematerialising music consumption and exchange."" In Proc. of Audio Mostly. London, UK, August 2017. [qmro] [acm digital library]

A. McArthur, M. Sandler and R. Stewart. "Distance in audio for VR: constraints and opportunities." In Proc. of Audio Mostly."London, UK, August 2017. [acm digital library]

S. Skach, P.G.T. Healey, and R. Stewart. "Talking through your arse: sensing conversation with seat covers."" In Proc. of 39th Annual Meeting of Cognitive Science Society. London, UK, July 2017. [cog sci]

R. Stewart and S. Skach, "Initial Investigations into Characterizing DIY E-Textile Stretch Sensors" In Proc. of 4th Int. Conf. on Movement Computing, London, UK, June 2017. [acm digital library] [qmro]

2016

K. Sicchio, C. Baker, T. Baoth Mooney and R. Stewart, "Hacking the Body 2.0: Flutter/Stutter," In Proc. of Int. Conf. on Live Interfaces, Sussex, UK, June 2016. [icli] [qmro]

2014

A. Hertenberger, B. Scholz, B. Contrechoc, R. Stewart, E. Kurbak, H. Perner-Wilson, I. Posch, I. Cabral, J. Qi, K. Childs, K. Kuusk, L. Calder, M. Toeters, M. Kisand, M. ten Bhömer, M. Donneaud, M. Grant, M. Coleman, M. Satomi, M. Tharakan, P. Vierne, S. Robertson, S. Taylor, and T. R. Nachtigall, "2013 e-textile swatchbook exchange: the importance of sharing physical work," In Proc. of the 2014 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers: Adjunct Program (ISWC '14 Adjunct), 77-81, New York, NY, USA, September 2014. [acm digital library]

2007 - 2011

R. Stewart and M. Sandler, "The amblr: A Mobile Spatial Audio Music Browser," AdMIRe 2011: 3rd International Workshop on Advances in Music Information Research, Barcelona, Spain, July 2011.

R. Stewart and M. Sandler, “Database of omnidirectional and B-format room impulse responses,” in Proc. of ICASSP 2010, Dallas, TX, USA, March 2010. [ieeexplore]

R. Stewart and M. Sandler, “Generating a spatial average reverberation tail across multiple impulse responses,” In Proc. of the 35th International Audio Engineering Society Conference on Audio for Games, London, UK, February 2009. [aes e-library]

R. Stewart, M. Levy, and M. Sandler, “3D interactive environment for music collection navigation,” In Proc. of the Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08) Conference, Helsinki, Finland, September 2008. [dafx]

R. Stewart and M. Sandler, “A real-time panning convolution reverberator,” In Proc. of the 123rd Audio Engineer ing Society International Convention, New York, NY, USA, October 2007. [aes e-library]

R. Stewart and M. Sandler, “Statistical measures of early reflections of impulse responses,” In Proc. of the Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-07) Conference, Bordeaux, France, September 2007. [dafx]

R. Stewart and D. Murphy, “A hybrid reverberation algorithm,” In Proc. of the 122nd Audio Engineering Society International Convention, Vienna, Austria, May 2007. [aes e-library]

Patent

M. Sandler and R. Stewart, Music Collection Navigation Device and Method, Patent US 9363619 B2, 2015.

Awards and Non-Research Grants

Inspire Award

2019

Queen Mary University of London Centre for Public Achievement

For those who have inspired others by finding creative and engaging ways to communicate their research; such as to raise young people’s aspirations or enthuse new and different audiences. Press Release

Daphne Oram Award Lecture in Digital Innovation

2016

British Science Association

The Daphne Oram Award Lecture is given at the British Science Festival and is awarded to an early career researcher for pushing technological boundaries, or for driving forward computer science.

Entrepreneur-in-Residence Scheme

2015

CreativeWorks London

Funding for a 4 month research project conducted while in residence at Queen Mary University of London with Dr. Andrew McPherson.

Making It Happen Scholarship

2009

Queen Mary, University of London

Scholarship program by Queen Mary Innovation for 3 months of continued living stipend after submission of the thesis in order to investigate commercialisation opportunities.

Pitch Your Idea Competition Winner

2009

Queen Mary, University Of London

First place winner of a Dragon’s Den - style competition involving writing a business plan and giving a 5 minute pitch. Awarded £1500 towards research activities.

Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship

2008

Google

Scholarship program sponsored by Google in memory of Anita Borg. One of twenty female students in computer science related disciplines from across Europe, the Middle East, and North Afirica to receive €5000. [website]

Queen Mary, University Of London Studentship

2006-2009

Queen Mary, University of London

Includes three years of fees and a living stipend.

University Of London Central Research Fund

2007

University of London

A grant towards the purchase of high-quality microphones for acoustic measurements.

Overseas Research Award Scheme

2007-2009

Queen Mary, University of London

Covers the difference between home and overseas fees for an overseas research student.

First Place Audio Engineering Society Graduate Student Design Competition

2006

Audio Engineering Society

Competition hosted by the Students Delegates Assembly for graduate student members.

Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation Grant

2005-2006, 2006-2007

Audio Engineering Society

Grants awarded to students doing post-graduate research in an audio-related field.